[Urgent] What is the most unreadable string which can be translated to a barcode
The reason I'm asking this is the company I work for develops an application which has a barcode reader functionality. The device we develop these softwares for has a very limited resolution camera (2MP). Now they want me to set a benchmark for the maximum length barcode pattern which is scannable. So what I'm trying to do is use an online barcode generator of CODE-128 and then feed various length strings to it. If I knew what pattern results in the most dense/unreadable barcode I'd be able to create different patterns using that.
6 replies
It's been a long time since I looked at bar codes, but this link is to an old printer manual that has some useful information in its appendix: https://www.cognitivetpg.com//assets/downloads/105-008-02_Programming_Manual-HTML_revC2.pdf
I'll look into it. Just trying to find the most hard to read barcode which can be formed from a given string length. Preferable in encoding 128
Barcodes are binary. Why not just create a string of alternating 1s and 0s with the occasional double number, then convert that into the format you need and generate the Barcode out of it.
I have no idea how barcodes work honestly. My reasoning behind asking this question is that since each pattern encodes a different string, so I'm trying to find the most illegible barcode which can be formed from a given string. Then I'll try to scan that with my device and the maximum length string/barcode which I can scan will be the value I'm looking for.
Can you help me understand how to follow through with this approach or if there's any problems in it?
I also don't know much about barcodes other than what I just read in the Wikipedia article, but my assumption would be you could find a bunch of characters with the most 1 widths (they will all add up to 11 though). For extra points you could calculate the check digit and make it 'hard to read' too.
Code 128 has three modes, which are described on wikipedia
try finding a sequence that makes it switch modes as often as possible, that'll make it harder for the software.